name to such a document, begged the
Duke to tell her whether there was not some excuse for the offender.

"None," said the Iron Duke; "he has deserted three times."

"Oh, think, your Grace," Victoria replied, "whether there be not
something in his favor."

"Well," said the Duke, "I am certain that he is a very bad soldier, but
he may, for aught I know, be a very good man. In fact, I remember
hearing some one speak for him."

"Oh, thank you!" exclaimed the queen, as she joyously wrote the word
"Pardoned" across the document.

It soon became evident that the tender-hearted queen would never be able
to deal with questions of this sort--that there was danger of all
offenders being pardoned; and a commission was finally appointed to
attend to such matters.

On June twenty-eighth, 1838, after she had been queen for over a year,
Victoria was formally crowned at Westminster Abbey. The crown worn by
her predecessors was far too large for her, so a new crown was made at a
cost of over five hundred thousand dollars. The spectacle was a most
impressive and inspiring one, and the queen went through her part in it,
as she had gone through her part at all ceremonies in which she had
participated, in a manner which roused anew the enthusiasm of her
subjects. When the prime minister finally placed the crown on Victoria's
head, all the peers and peeresses placed their coronets on their heads
and shouted _God Save the Queen_. Carlyle said of her at that time,
"Poor little Queen! She is at an age at which a girl can hardly be
trusted to choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task is laid upon her from
which an archangel might shrink."

Another writer, however, said, "I consider that it would be impossible
to exaggerate the enthusiasm of the English people on the accession of
Victoria to the throne." And it was this enthusiasm on the part of her
subjects, joined with her own extraordinary common sense, which enabled
her to bear up under circumstances which might well have daunted an
older and a wiser sovereign.

Of course one of the chief questions with regard to the new queen was
that of her marriage. Usually the marriage of a sovereign was
practically settled as a question of statecraft, but Victoria showed no
inclination to allow her domestic life to be regulated by her ministers.
In 1836 there had visited her at Kensington Palace her cousin Albert of
Saxe-Coburg, and Victoria had looked upon him very favorably. Her uncle
Leopold o